Managing Salinization Institutional Analysis of Public Irrigation Systems [Paperback]

Salinization of soils is a major threat to irrigated agriculture and counteracts the targets of costly public infrastructure investments. In this study, salinization is regarded as the outcome of an institutional arrangement which impedes the effective implementation of well-known and well-established control measures be they technical, managerial or economic. In public irrigation systems neither the management units nor the farmers are offered any incentives towards the control of high groundwater levels and salinization if the management units are embedded in a highly centralized non-market institutional setting. The author answers the question under which conditions management units and irrigators are active in halting and reversing the process of salinization.Salinization of soils is a major threat to irrigated agriculture and counteracts the targets of costly public infrastructure investments. In this study, salinization is regarded as the outcome of an institutional arrangement which impedes the effective implementation of well-known and well-established control measures be they technical, managerial or economic. In public irrigation systems neither the management units nor the farmers are offered any incentives towards the control of high groundwater levels and salinization if the management units are embedded in a highly centralized non-market institutional setting. The author answers the question under which conditions management units and irrigators are active in halting and reversing the process of salinization.One: Theories on the Provision and Supply of Goods and Services Through Political and Bureaucratic Systems.- 1. Economic theories of democracy and bureaucracy.- 2. Criticisms to Niskanens model of bureaucratic supply from an institutional perspective.- 3. The New Institutional Economics, or the Institutional Rational Choice approach.- 3.1 Transaction and information costs.- 3.2 Collective action.- 4. The nature of water as a resource, and the peculÃ&